Tailwind from the important sales market China gave the German automotive sector a boost on Wednesday. The prices of the major manufacturers rose sharply in some cases. The supplier’s documents Continental However, they backed out after a damaging comment from a major US bank. The shares of the car chip producer Infineon, however, benefited from a positive analyst opinion.
The Chinese car market performed stronger in March than previously estimated. According to the association, car deliveries are likely to have increased by 7 percent year-on-year based on preliminary data. An early estimate was for an increase of almost 4 percent. Beijing also wants to make it easier to grant credit for private car purchases in order to stimulate the market.
Investors then took action in the middle of the week: in the leading index Dax, the premiums of 0.6 percent at Porsche AG were over 1.6 percent Volkswagen up to 2.8 percent BMW. Only Mercedes-Benz lagged behind. China is still the most important single market for German car manufacturers.
Infineon shares rose by 2.6 percent. The investment bank Morgan Stanley advised investors to overweight stocks in their portfolio. A lot of the bad news has already been priced into the share price, wrote analyst Lee Simpson. This particularly applies to concerns about declining market shares in China. Statements from the company also indicated that the order backlog had bottomed out. If inventories are reduced, margins could also recover.
Continental is different: With a discount of 2.5 percent, the papers suffered from a skeptical outlook from the JPMorgan bank for the upcoming quarterly balance sheet. Analyst Jose Asumendi expects Continental and other suppliers to have a weak start to 2024. He cited higher labor costs, generally increasing additional costs and negative currency effects as reasons.